EasyLinuxGuide Blog

I had heard of DreamLinux quite a while ago but only recently decided to try it out. It is a very polished distro that seems to strive for the perfect balance between up to date packages and ease of use in terms of configuration. It uses Debian packages and focuses on the Lenny branch which is testing. Images are linked to larger originals – click for full view.

The Install – It couldn’t get any easier than the method DreamLinux uses. After booting the Live CD, there is one screen where you can decide on your partitions and whether or not you want to use a bootloader or not and adding a user of your choice. Although it might have been nice to have a bit more configuration settings such as package selection, I tend to find package selection with preconfigured desktop distros to be more of a hassle. The DreamLinux team did a nice job of keeping things simple.

Upgrading – DreamLinux includes the Synaptic package manager. It was very easy to upgrade, although there were a great deal of packages to update after my install. I have yet to figure out how to get my Nvidia drivers installed despite reading forum tips and google searches. The upgrades took a while to complete, but it wasn’t too painful with a decent internet connection…

Sound and Video Menu – I was pleasantly surprised to see some of the applications preinstalled. It is very rare one ever sees either Mplayer or Easytag included with a default install and DreamLinux had both. Also included is Avidemux and Brasero is listed for burning…

Also worth mentioning is the fact that Sound Juicer was included and had a preset for creating mp3 files from cd’s which had not been included in the past. It seems to be a change in Sound Juicer but it’s definitely nice to have an application provided that does not require any intervention to add mp3 profiles as previous versions of Sound Juicer demanded…

Making Things Easier – A few things that are included in DreamLinux that some users may appreciate in terms of getting things running right away include a Gmail check application, The Gimp remodeled with the GimpShop configuration to make it work more like photoshop…

Extras – DreamLinux includes some extra configuration tools aside from its own control center as well. Of note, there is a simple colored folders window that allows you to change your aesthetic preference. Also, there is a built in tool for getting wireless drivers working that may need to load the Windows original using Ndiswrapper. This should be included in any distro that is looking to attract more users to switch to Linux.

In addition, you can see throughout the screenshots that DreamLinux uses AWN (Avant Window Navigator) as the dock at the bottom. I remember using a Gdesklets dock many years ago that I eventually became frustrated with because it broke with every Gdesklets upgrade. I can’t comment at all on AWN but I’ve seen it around more often recently so hopefully it is more stable than I remember Gdesklets.

Issues – The only issue I really ran into was trying to get my Nvidia drivers installed. I eventually deferred to trying the binary driver from the Nvidia site. Even when I tried to get back to a tty, the screen just went multicolored and did not seem to allow it. I also attempted to boot into single user mode and was unsuccessful with that. While compiz is provided with DreamLinux, it isn’t of much use without providing an easy way to get drivers working fully.

Overall – DreamLinux may not be considered unique to some because it uses Debian packages as a backend and this seems to be an ever-growing prevalence among startup distros; however, there are some unique characteristics about DreamLinux that make it worth checking out. DreamLinux uses the testing branch of Debian so it is more up to date than a lot of other distros. This means that you get all of the new features of applications, but there is also a risk of instability that is inherited. DreamLinux also has some cosmetic differences such as sing the AWN and also its own configuration tools and choice of applications. For any Linux enthusiast I would say it is worth installing and testing. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for production machines at least not until I’ve done more testing. There is more documentation and extra screenshots on the DreamLinux documentation page.

UFC’s Ultimate Fight Night 15 took place in Omaha Nebraska which is the hometown of Houston Alexander who was on the latest card. The main event was Nate Diaz vs Josh Neer, however; the loudest ovation was for Houston Alexander from his hometown crowd as he faced Eric “Red” Schafer. The UFC aired this event on Spike TV for free.

I went 7 for 10 on my picks overall with which I was happy since there were some really tough picks. Unfortunately one of the fights I lost was the Alexander vs Schafer bout.

I’m sure Alexander will never read this nor anyone who trains him, but nonetheless, the secret is out: there is an easy formula to beat Houston Alexander and he proved it that night. As great of a fighter that Thiago Silva is, it was surprising how easily he dominated Alexander in his victory over the Nebraska native. Houston was exposed. He had a weak ground game, possibly nonexistant ground defense. After that loss, one would think that Houston and his trainers would work tirelessly to improve his ground game as he looked completely helpless and dominated by Silva. We didn’t get a chance to see it tested until Fight Night 15 because his previous fight was a knockout courtesy of a superman punch landed by James “The Sandman” Irvin. Schafer divulged his own strategy for beating Alexander: get through the intial onslaught of punches and then take over, which is exactly what Schafer did. I was impressed with Schafer’s ability to work through that barrage since some of Alexander’s strikes landed cleanly and would have knocked out many a foe. Schafer then took over and it was a carbon copy of the Silva fight. Alexander is now 2-3 in the UFC and had just signed an extension with the MMA juggernaut prior to this matchup. UFC is notorious for releasing fighters when they don’t win, but Alexander is still a big draw due to his all or nothing fighting style.

Alexander is a very likable character and seems like a genuinely nice guy, but if he wants to stay around in the UFC, the ground game or take down defense needs to improve prior to his next fight or it could be all over.

Criterion’s Burnout Paradise has set a new mark with DLC (downloadable content). If you own an Xbox 360 or a PS3 and you don’t have this game and have been considering picking it up, see why it is well worth it. The developers at Criterion are truly the best example of demonstrating that they listen to the customers and actually implement requests. The greatest thing about this is that they did it all for free after the game was released. The most recent update as seen in the video link above is the addition of bikes into gameplay. This re-invents the game in terms of playability and also adds over 70 new challenges. Burnout Paradise is simply the best looking feature rich and dynamic racing game out right now. Many thanks to Criterion to demonstrating how a game should be developed and how to release DLC! Thank you!

It took a while and surely some people gave up on the project because of the wait, but Carrier has finally been upgraded to version 2.5. This is is significant because the previous version of 2.4.1 had stopped working with the MSN protocol, rendering it useless for anyone who exclusively used those accounts. Version 2.4.1 was released in April and somewhere along the line, the MSN protocol changed and despite requests in the forums, things seemed at a standstill. It wasn’t until late August that the software was updated. There are a lot of great reasons in theory to support the Carrier project, but ultimately we all need a working IM. I even explored the use of Empathy which is going to be the default IM application in future releases of Gnome. It shows a lot of promise and is being developed actively and upgraded regularly which is great. The main difference or advantage between Empathy and traditional IMs is that it will support voice chat and also integrate into Gnome’s environment. An example of this would be that you would see an icon to call someone from within the Evolution email client. It will take some time to move things forward but the future does look promising for Empathy and Gnome.

In terms of the future of Carrier, we can only hope that the recent past is not an indication of future development. Carrier has a great opportunity to attract users. It won’t attract as many as it did when it initially started though since one of the main reasons for its creation was to enable the text resizing box during chats and secondly Pidgin is still the defacto IM client included with a lot of distros. While a lot of Linux users will put forth the extra effort to replace Pidgin with Carrier if they feel strongly enough about it, for most people, they are likely to leave well enough alone.

I am not giving up on Carrier yet though. The current version took a bit long for my liking to be released, but it’s here now and it works very well.

My advice for the developers at Carrier would be to make packages readily available for various distros including the most up to date version and make them easy to find on the website. For example. the preamble for the Ubuntu version still links to version 2.4.1. Also, keep up to date and respond to people in the forums more regularly. After all, from your main stanza on the homepage, you indicate: “What makes us different from the official client, is that we work for you.” If that is truly the case, then it needs to be demonstrated fully.